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Interesting view on why good old fashioned face-to-face qualitative research is not being replaced by online focus groups and forums, from Stephen Rothman, Global Planning Director on Papmers at Saatchi. Stephen was talking at The NowAndNext online research conference I attended today.

1. Seeing the whole person - Stephen liked being able to see people in real life, as body language and facial expression are so important. I remember the example quoted about this by Siimon Clift, former CEO of Unilever. In focus groups consumers said that both Pantene and Sedal were both "good" brands. However, when taking about Sedal they were more animated and "sitting forward", not sitting back, showing how much closer they were to the brand.

2. Being able to go "off-piste" - good old qual allows you to improvise and go off the discussion guide, if something interesting comes up. This is much harder to do using online research

3. Consumers bouncing ideas off each other - the final thing Stephen liked about qual is the way consumers in qual research can interact and share ideas. Again this sort of real-life conversation and is hard to replicate online.

In conclusion, in the same way that online media works with conventional media rather than replacing it, the same thing seems to go for online research. For certain tasks, especially doing routine quantitative research, online has become dominant. However, conventional qual still has a role to play for exploring more in-depth exploration of consumer attitudes and behaviour.

My highlight of last week was news from Carol and the Ryvita team about good results from their brand revitalisation, that we helped them on, back in 2009. The brand now in 22% value growth year-on-year, and total value share is up 2.3pts to 15.3%.

Its a great example of re-focusing on the core business and rejuvenating it.

1. Refresh the brand exprssion

At the heart of the Ryvita re-launch was a more confident and contemporary expression of the brand, both in terms of product "sausage" and emotional "sizzle".

The brand had become famous as an aid to dieting, with advertising proclaiming "In the inch war, Ryvita helps you win". Later advertising maintained the diet association by featuring a TV presenter, Fern Britton, who was a public and controversial dieter (using surgery to loose weight). This was a clear positioning, but it led to the brand's crispbreads having an image of being dry, boring and "punitive": something you had to eat rather than want to eat. And by 2009, people were less prepared ro make a "trade-off" when trying to eat more healthily. They wanted healthy food that was nice to eat too.

A breakthrough came when talking to Ryvita users by themselves, not in a focus group setting. They said they loved the product. It was crunchy, tasty and the perfect host for lots of lovely toppings. And on top, it was really healthy.

This led to a communication strategy to dramatise the delicious food you can create with Ryivta. Also, the idea was to portray Ryvita in a social setting, not a something to eat on your own in secret. The re-launch advertising had the endline "For Ladies who Crunch" and can be seen here, or by clicking on the blog below.

I think the recent fine-tuning of the campaign here makes it even more effective. The new set of three friends and the higher production values make the brand more aspirational. And the endline "Fancy that" is a call to action that dials up the taste appeal.

2. Follow the money

The team "followed the money" to re-focus talent and budget on the core crispbread business, which accounted for 70% of sales, but was in decline. The team took the tough decision to kill two new products had been diverting attention from the core, risked diluting the Ryvita brand and where the "ability to win" was limited. The first was Limbos, a savoury snack which took Ryvita head-to-head against the might of Walkers (Frito Lay). The second was goodness bars, which took the brand out of savoury food into sweet cereal bars, up against the power of Kellogg's.

3. The power of packaging

The crispbread packaging has been re-vamped, with two key improvements I think are worth highlighting. First, the new packs celebrate the product plus topping, whereas the previous version had actually made the Ryvita crispbread invisible, as if the brand was embarrassed about showing its product!. Second, the new pack introduces a consistent brand symbol in the form of the red rectangle, which is now used across the range and should help create "memory structure" to make the brand recognizable on shelf.

4. Smart stretching

The Ryvita Thins extension has worked well for the brand, helping add incremental sales value of £8million. The brand has tapped into the habit of "dipping" which is popular, and created a product to meet this need which is, for the moment, unique. Dipping is a social habit, so Thins further builds the sociability of the brand.

5. Using product formats for memory structure

A final thing I like about Ryvita is the way the product range has consistency in format, texture and mouth experience: rectangular/square, crunchy, savoury. This is an under-used way of building distinctive memory structure that helps the brand be recognized and recalled. Interestingly, the two products that were killed, Goodness Bars and Limbos, broke with this memory structure and so were diluting the brand's visual equity.

In conclusion, Ryvita is a cracking (sorry) case study that shows how to re-focus create energies and budgets on the core business to get it growing again. And then using this solid foundation as a platform for stretching into new occasions.

Back in July 2011 I posted here that "The closure of the New of the World leaves the door open to a stronger brand portfolio through the launch of "The Sunday Sun"."

And, voila. This Sunday Rupert Murdoch's News International will indeed launch The Sun on Sunday newspaper. It will replace the gap in the brand portfolio left by the killing of the toxic News of the World (NOTW), fatally damaged by a series of sordid scandals about phone tapping. [Note for non-UK readers: the Sun is Britain's biggest selling daily newspaper, sold Monday-Saturday. The NOTW was the biggest Sunday newspaper, sold only on Sunday].

Although its in the world of media, there are some interesting branding learnings from this story which are broadly applicable, in particular the benefits of brand focus.

1. The benefits of brand focus

By replacing the NOTW with the Sun, New International will end up with a better brand portfolio, focused on one single brand. This means all the marketing effort put into the Sun brand can now be leveraged seven days a week, instead of just six.

This move will also be more efficient from a cost standpoint. With two brands, the temptation is to have separate teams, as was the case with The Sun and the NOTW. "Oh, we're not like the Sun. We have our own editorial style. And a proud history of our own. etc." Now there can be a single editorial team, which should reduce complexity and costs.

2. New brands are a last resort

Company's often rush into branding decisions, without thinking through the issues in a structured way. This often leads to a new brand being created, when this should be a last resort, given the costs to create, build and manitain it.

The key issue to consider is the degree of stretch from the core product (The daily Sun newspaper sold Monday - Saturday) and the new product (a popular Sunday paper).The Sun has similar mix of sport, sex and scandal that the NOTW had. The stretch from the core is limited, and so a brand plus decriptor is the right strategy. If the stretch had been bigger, a sub-brand or even new brand could have been considered, as illustrated below. For example, if the strategy had been to launch a more middle-market newspaper.

3. Being forced to follow the money

Perhaps the most interesting bit of the story is how it took a sordid scandal to force News International to "follow the money" and create an efficient, single brand portfolio. Shouldn't the NOTW should have been replaced with the Sun years ago, especially given the decline in newspaper circulation, which requires more cost reduction and a drive for efficiency? After all, this is a common branding strategy used with The Times/The Sunday Times and the Daily/Sunday Telegraph.

And come on. What better brand could there be for SUNday that The SUN? Duh!

So, why do companies like News International not follow the money with their brand portfolios? One key reason is the emotional attachment to brands in the company. Managers find it hard to kill a brand they have grown to like or even love. Second, companies over estimate the importance of brands. As long as the service or product stays the same, or even improves, most people will carry on buying if the brand changes name.

In conclusion, the Sun on Sunday shows beautifully the benefits of brand focus. When it comes to branding, as in business in general, less is definitely more.

I've posted before about my belief that social media for brands is more about communication than conversation. New research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (EBI) backs this up, as reported in an Advertising Age article.

Cutting through the hype and hysteria

Social media evangelists would have us believe that mass marketing is being replaced by a more interactive form of marketing based on "conversations". Here's a typical quote from Econsultancy:

"The traditional top-down approach of exposing people to messages (is) being superseded by another model which is all about conversations."

Well, traditional media is not really being superseded at all, as last week's post on TV showed. People are still watching lots of TV, helping TV advertising maintain its effectiveness. Rather, social media is an additional marketing channel which works with the other more established ones, rather than replacing them.

And what about this new model where consumers want to have conversations with brands? The EBI researchers used a Facebook metric, "People Talking About This", to get some hard data to cut through the hype. This metric adds up the total likes, posts, comments, tags, shares and other ways of interacting with brand pages. The team looked at this number of people as a percentage of the total people liking the pages of the top 200 brands on Facebook.

And the result? On everage, only 1.3% of brand page likers were interacting with the brand page. And if you take out the new likers, which only requires one click to sign up, the figure drops even lower to 0.45%. In other words, 99.5% of people following a brand's Facebook page didn't interact with it.

So much for a new era of conversation. The research seems to confirm that social media is in reality another communication channel, as Karen Nelson-Field from EBI says: "People need to understand what it can do for a brand and what it can't do. Facebook doesn't really differ from mass media. It's great to get decent reach."

Why 99.5% only consume content

So, how come 99.5% of people didn't interact with branded Facebook pages?

First, most of us are simply too busy to bother creating content. Indeed, for many or even most brands we're wouldn't be interested in a conversation at all, even if we had time. Ben Hammersley of Wired UK put it this way, in an article in Marketing here (subscription needed).

"The notion that consumers want to take time out of their busy lives to watch content or even co-create it is a myth. Nobody ever wanted to do any of this. People only think of your brand once - when they buy it."

Second, most brand content on facebook is not viewed nice and neatly on the brand's facebook page. Rather, people consume brand content as part of their "news feed", the stream of content from brands they follow and, more importantly, their most important friends (see picture below). Mashable reports that "Fans are 40 to 150 times more likely to consume branded material in their news feeds than on the actual fan page". This means your brand's content has fight to stand out at all.

The implications for brands

1. Content is king: you need a small, talented team of people creating and "curating" great content. This is a skill-set most marketers don't have. You may need to hire in or sub-contract to people with writing or journalistic experience.

2. Manage expectations: don't be surprised to see low levels of likes or comments on posts on your facebook page. For a brand with, say, 20,000 likes getting c 100. comments/likes on a post would be about average. Although the more interesting brands do achieve better scores than this,

3. Be newsworthy: you need to work on maximising the chances of your content making into your followers' news feeds, as not all brand page content makes it there. There are some tips on how to do that here.

4. The 0.5% does have value: even if only a minority of people do interact with a brand's facebook page, these interactions do have value. This is because these comments or likes will show up on their top friends' newsfeeds. This means that the interactions of the 0.5% will be communicated to a much wider group. For example, if I "like" a post from a brand I follow, the fact I have done this will show up in the newsfeed of some of my friends (which friends depends on an algorithm facebook uses).

In conclusion, social media is another communication channel that complements more established media. And, as has always been the case, chances of success are increased by creating great content people want to consume and maybe event comment on.

"The old TV advertising way of sending messages out AT a mass audience is dead!"

This sensationalist, scare-mongering message is a popular headline-grabber. And it was the order of the day again at a social media conference I attended this week. Of course, the people shouting this from the roof-top had a vested interest - they were selling, you've guessed it, social media servcies.

Well, another brilliant booklet from Thinkbox brings some much-needed data to the table. And it shows that when it comes to media, TV is still the king, despite the many, shiny new pretenders to its crown. Here's why.

1. TV delivers the best ROI

TV advertising is much more effective than radio, press, online display and outdoor according to an extensive econometric study by Ebiquity (3,000 ad campaigns across nine sectors). TV advertising delivered an average return of £1.70 profit for every £1 invested in the study, 2.5 x more effective than the next best performing medium, which was press.

2. TV is getting MORE effective

The doomsayers predicting the demise of TV advertising are, pardon the French, talking bollocks. The Ebiquity study found that TV’s profit ROI has increased by 22% in the last five years. According to Thinkbox, "This is largely explained by the reduced price of TV which is itself a consequence of record commercial TV viewing." In the last ten years, commercial TV viewing has increased by over 3 hours, 30 minutes a week.

3. TV amplifies other media, inc. social media

TV dramatically improves the performance of other "response-gathering" media, according to research by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA):

- Print response +92%

- Direct mail response + 96%

- Online responses + 164%

And the social media evangelists often overlook the fact that many of the online success stories were ignited by TV. Take the Old Spice Twitter/You Tube campaign we posted on here. This was ignited by the most conventional form of mass marketing: a TV ad in the Superbowl.

Indeed, many of the most viral online films were initially aired on TV, such as the John Lewis Xmas ad (4mill views on YouTube) and the Yeo Valley rapping farmers (2mill YouTube views). The latter was premiered in the most social of TV shows in the UK, the X-Factor. What better way to get people talking about a brand film than to air it on a programme being watched 10million+ people, many of them families and friends watching together?

4. The Sky+/PVR has not killed TV advertising

Another alarmist bit of scaremongering was the prediction that personal video recorders like Sky+ would kill TV advertising, by allowing people to record TV programmes and so skip the ads. Well, despite the rapid rise of such devices, guess what proportion of TV is "time-shifted" (i.e. recorded to watch later)? 50%? 30%? 20%? Nope. In fact, its only 9.4%. More than 90% of TV is still watched live.

In conclusion, the next time you hear the social media evangelists screaming that the days of mass media and TV advertising are dead, you have the facts at your fingertips to tell them they're talking a load of tosh.

I never expected my morning yoga class to give me marketing lessons, but when Heidi said, ‘know where your core is’ as we were easing our way into a challenging asana position, I thought what a good reminder for marketers today.

In yoga we learn how important it is to be rooted to the core of what holds our bodies together to maintain a posture that sustains good health. As we marketers embark on our stretchy communication and innovation programs, we should also remain rooted in the essential qualities that brought our brands into existence and hopefully fame.

A brand that has recently restored its core from a daunting decline, and thus rekindled its very "brand soul" and so restored profitable growth, is Starbucks.

With rocketing success since its inception in 1971, Starbucks defined a new coffee experience, established the ‘3rd place’, and Howard Schultz became a hero on Wall Street. Starbucks enjoyed unprecedented growth in the 90s and 00’s, adding 16,000 stores worldwide in just 2 decades. But in this rapid expansion, the company lost sight of the fundamentals that made it famous. It chased too much growth, too fast. Attention to detail in delivering a quality coffee experience were lost to the extension efforts. Its core offer was commoditized as the focus turned to food, music, and yet more locations. This showed in the results, a 10% decline in same store sales from 2008.

"The big issue I think was that growth is not a strategy, it is a tactic, and if growth becomes a strategy I don't think it is an enduring one. I think growth covers up mistakes." Howard Schultz, Founder and CEO Starbucks

Howard Schultz returned as CEO to re-take the reigns once again in 2008, as we posted on here. He lost no time to refocus the company on the core coffee business:

- He closed all its stores for 4 hours on the same day to retrain its employees in doing what Starbucks should do best – make great coffee. “It was a shock to the system and public admission that we needed to go back to the core” Howard Schultz

- Starbucks has steadily refreshed and refurbished its core coffee offering, introducing a favored Pike’s Place blend (Pike’s Place was their original store location in Seattle in 1971)

- Introduction Via, its instant coffee

- Launch of a mild roast, Blonde

- Re-focusing on the barista’s delivery of coffee. One of the key success factors we all admired and quoted so often about Starbucks, was their attention they paid to how the consumer received the coffee from the barista and the relationship that ensued.

The lessons from Starbucks are invaluable for marketers who must pay attention to revitalizing their core brands after decades of over-expansion may have diluted its essence:

1. Remember and Refresh:

Look back at what made you famous – bring this back to life with renewed relevance.

Create continuous news in chapters of renovation – total concepts based on big ideas, not just new flavors.

3. Innovate the Core:

Don't think innovation is only "big I" Innovation like Apple stretching into the iPad and iPhond. It can also be "liitle i" innovation to upgrade the core offer, taking a leaf from Shultz

Howard Schultz has successfully turned around the fortune of Starbucks in his relentless efforts to rekindle the core of the brand. In January 2012, Starbucks announced a growth of 9% in comparable store sales, resulting in a 13% increase in net revenue to a record $3.4bn.

At the heart of this brand’s success is another fundamental truth – the passion and purpose of the founding brand leaders add a critical element to a brand’s success: “I didn’t come back to save the company—I hate that description— I came back to rekindle the emotion that built it.”

Note from David: its nice to sometimes call things right. Here's what we said back in 2008 when Shultz returned: "My bet is that one year from now Starbuck's will be in much better health. In fact, I think its time to buy some stock... check back here!"

Well, I did buy stock. And if only I'd added a few zeros on what I bought..... well, I wouldn't be here writing this ;-)

You have to admit you get variety on the brandgym blog. We're moving on from Yorkshire as a back-drop for David Hockney's inspiring exhibition in my last post, to Yorkshire puddings today, from brand Aunt Bessie's.

For non-UK readers, Yorshire puddings are best known as an accompaniment to the traditional Sunday roast lunch. Aunt Bessie's have built their business by selling frozen Yorkshire puds that give you the traditional taste, but without the hassle of home cooking.

The challenge for Aunt Bessie's is that the Sunday roast has been on the decline for many years. The number regularly sitting down to Sunday lunch halved between 1961 to 2007, from 12.7 to 6 million, according to The Guardian.

So, a recent campaign has been launched to try and grow the category by promoting the idea of eating Yorkshire puddings in the week. You can watch the ad here, or click below if you're on the blog website. Here's some learning.

1. Leaders should lead category growth

Growing the category makes sense for Aunt Bessie's, as they are the market leader in Yorkshire puds with a 60% share according to The Grocer.. This means that they should get at least 60% of any market growth, hopefully more as they're the brand driving it.

Although buying frequency between brands in a category are similar and hard/impossible to change, you can work on increasing the frequency of uses of the whole category. For example, soft drink consumption per person amongst brands in the USA may be similar. But consumption per capita of the category as a whole is higher in the US vs. the UK.

2. Building brand properties

Aunt Bessie's is a good example of creating and amplifying brand properties in order to build "memory structure". The latest Aunt Bessie's ad again features two nosey neighbours called Margeret and Mabel, who have been featured in the brand's communication now for three years. The old ladies are used to communicate in an entertaining way how the Aunt Bessie's user manages to cook great tasting, traditional food for her family whilst still living a busy life. "Yorkshire's on a school night! How does she do that?" they ask.

3. Growing the core

The brand has grown to now grown to have £173m in sales (year to June 2011), with growth of 8%, and the range now also includes roast potatoes, vegetables and puddings. But its good to see Aunt Bessie's going back to the core Yorkshire pud. This product is key to the brand:

- Source of authority: the product with which the brand was born, and which is still the best dramatisation of what the brand is famous for

- Source of profit: still an important part of the brand's sales

In conclusion, this a nice example of a leader brand seeking to grow not through changing the product, or by adding additional new products, but by growing the core business by growing the category.

This is one of my slightly "off-piste" posts, this time drawing inspiration from the art world.

Last Sunday I went with my family to see the David Hockney exhibition, A Bigger Picture, at the Royal Academy in London. It was one of most amazing exhbitions I've seen in years and I came out feeling energized and inspired. The paintings are all of landscapes, captured in brilliant, vivid, bright colours. If you are in London in the next couple of months, I recommend it as a great way to spend a couple of hours.

I also found Hockney to be an inspiring example of a guy "keeping it fresh", maintaining his energy and productivity, a subject I posted on earlier this year. After all, here is a guy into his 70's who is still performing at a high level, both in terms of quality and quantity. The exhibition runs to 11 galleries inside the Royal Academy, most of it featuring recent paintings.

So, here is some creative inspiration from Hockney's approach.

1. Use of new technology

One of the most amazing bits of the exhibition is a huge hall full with 52 paintings of a wooded area in East Yorkshire near where Hockney now lives. Of these, 51 of the paintings have been done on an iPad, a tool that Hockney has embraced with enthusiasm. And this is not just a gimmick to catch attention. He finds that the iPad allows him to quickly capture a moment in time in all its glory, without the need to set up an easel and paints, as reported on the Royal Academy website:

"In two seconds, Hockney found, he could establish the basic colour and tone of a sky, and put in some faint clouds in three seconds. The iPad is faster than watercolour, in which washes have to dry, or even coloured pencils."

In fact, Hockney's interest in using new technology in his art goes back in a long way. In 1985, he was commissioned to draw with a computer program called the Quantel Paintbox, that allowed the him to sketch directly onto the screen.

2. Going back to your roots

Hockney lived for over 30 years in LA, but came back to the UK in 2006, reportedly because of the intolerance towards smoking in California! He chose to live in a seaside town on the North East coast of England called Bridlington, where his mother used to live. Now for those of you who have not been to Bridlington, let me just say its aint Malibu.

His surroundings now might lack the glamour and the sunshine of LA, but this change has been asscoiated with a period of incredible productivity. One interviewer noted:"Even in his 70s, David Hockney’s enthusiasm is boyish, his work rate ferocious."

3. Happy accidents

Many innovations and creative achievements come not from carefully planned strategies, but what I call "happy accidents". You experiment, spot something that works and do more of it. Hockney's experience with the iPad is an example of this, as he explains:

"I had begun drawing the changing scene on the iPad in the New Year, then, when I’d printed out five or six iPad drawings on a big scale, I began to realise, my God, you could do the whole room with this method. As the spring developed I realised that I had to move in closer because it was all about what was happening on the ground. Grasses came up, the first campion flowers, buttercups, dandelions. I kept going back to the same places."

A happy accident also helped Hockney came up with his photo-collage style, created with many Poloroid snaps (see example on the left), that he started using back in 1970, as a writer explains:

"He was working on a painting of a living room and terrace in Los Angeles. He took Polaroid shots of the living room and glued them together, not intending for them to be a composition on their own. Upon looking at the final composition, he realized it created a narrative, as if the viewer was moving through the room. He began to exclusively pursue this new style of photography."

4. Personal branding

Finally, its interesting to see how Hockney has cultivated his own personal brand. He has maintained over 40+ years a distinctive and recognizable set of "brand properties": the round spectacles, the ever-present cigarette, the short blonde, now greying, hair. Many other famous artists and creative people (Andy Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Steve Jobs) have done the same thing, helping them take on inonic status.

In conclusion, Hockney's recent work shows the power of combining new technology and re-connecting with your roots, and the potential of happy accidents to be the spark of innovation.